Reslock joins 5 ring club and the AGA hates PokerStars (and money)

There were less than 200 entrees into the WSOP Circuit $580 NLHE event at Caesars in Atlantic City, but the final results were worth notice. AC and east coast legend Chris Reslock joined a very small club when he won the tournament and captured his 5th WSOP-C ring. He joins Ari Engel, Kyle Cartwright, Mark Smith, and Kurt Jewel in the 5 ring club and just one victory behind Alexandru Masek. Reslock has one WSOP bracelet as well, in the 2010 $3,000 H.O.R.S.E. tournament, and over $1,000,000 in career tournament earnings.

Also underway this week is the price-reduced WPT Bay 101 Shooting Star tournament, the buy-in reduced from $10,000 to $7,500. It looks like the discount is producing similar results as seen at the Borgata when they dropped their price to draw in more people yet still end up with a larger prizepool. Moon Kim is the defending champion.

Link Dump

Tweet of the Day – Tournament Director extraordinaire Matt Savage made it “official” with this tweet, the Bay 101 Shooting Star will top attendance and prizepool numbers from last year’s event.

Not too late to jump on a plane and get out to @bay101casino @wpt. Prize pool is bigger than last year already at a smaller buy in $7,500!

So many new podcasts. At least the voices in our heads are staying fresh … and there really is more news and analysis related to poker and gaming and casinos and gambling than you can read all over the internet.

Some shows I recently found and/or enjoyed … you may want to give a listen, and perhaps bookmark for recurring download:

Poker Fraud Alert Forum Radio — I try to steer clear of industry love triangles, but sometimes can’t avoid the latest Donkdown breakup story. New and clique-worthy from Druff and Drexel: the pilot episode of their version of the old show, complete with real newschat about a botched pepper-spray robbery for Bellagio cranberries (as per plans hatched on Craigslist), the felony arrest of alleged exposed Vegas scammer Peter Falcone, and informed tangential discussion of female biology on, off, and under the table. http://pokerfraudalert.com/forum/radio.php

It’s hard to play anywhere in Vegas as a non-tourist without hearing noise about the room you’re in or one down The Strip. No wonder so many regs wear headphones. But I keep my ears unplugged to filter through it all for Pokerati — and so Dan has at least half a clue about what’s real, what’s bullshit and what’s a live tell.

Some of what I’ve picked up lately:

Karina Jett is the MGM’s new poker room ambassador, meaning she will promote the room and host the weekly $120 HORSE event at 7:15pm every Tuesday. Jett has hosted the HORSEament previously at the Palms and then M Resort before settling into her new gig at MGM. The inaugural running at MGM featured a drinks-flowing pre-party that saw Cyndy Violette, Gavin Smith, Layne Flack, Allen Kessler, and Erik Seidel.

DonkDown Radio founder Bryan Micon won the tournament last week, beating a pro-filled field of about 80 for a $2k score, along with besting several others in a last-longer bet that paid an added $4k. The next running, earlier this week, attracted a field of about 60 players.

Meanwhile, WPT Executive Tour Director Matt Savage is also on board with MGM, serving as tournament director for the upcoming Grand Challenge Tournament series. Savage apparently was looking for something else to do in Vegas now that the Epic events are off his calendar.

Occupy Aria?
Players take Ivey Room mixed game back to Bellagio

This hasn’t been confirmed yet, but according to at least one regular player in one of the bigger regular games in Vegas:

For everyone that plans on playing mixgames in Las Vegas…We are no longer playing at Aria… Come join us everyday at @BellagioPoker

FWIW I saw Jean Robert Belande (@BrokeLivingJRB) still playing in Ivey’s room with David Williams (@DWPoker) just last night, so there could be more to this schism. If it’s all political, as Crazy Mike says, that could explain why Barack Obama was in town yesterday.

Donkdown Cold Call Show

All have heard by now about the constantly streaming broadcast by the Quadjacks crew … but before they existed, and perhaps giving them credibility from the get-go, the crew at Donkdown were the originators of raw poker radio. We used to never give much credence to anything live … if I couldn’t listen at my own convenience in podcast form, what was the point?

I’ll have to reassess my internet radio philosophy after the Pokerpacolypse dust settles … but in the meantime, I’m waiting in the wings now to go on the show where no one is supposed to be able to get away with any BS, but in exchange, anyone can get a say.

Should be a fun episode as some semblance of sensibility is starting to emerge. I suspect to be called out rather harshly for running an op-ed from a former UB lawyer telling people their money is presumably gone forever the day before the DOJ said they could get it back. (Clearly they’ve been reading and listening and didn’t want me to make any wagers, so thanks guys, for putting out such a statement before it was too late!)

Alright everyone, I usually give you all three podcast to listen to, but since one of the shows has a run time of four plus hours we will only be bringing you two shows. This week we are bringing you some of the newest information from the Ultimate Bet scandal.

Rabbit Hunt:

Our friends over at the Rabbit Hunt started off this weeks show with some news but the part we are all interested in starts at the 16:00 mark. The guys got mookman5, who is a wealth of information when it comes to the Ultimate Bet scandal, to come on the show and discuss the latest Travis Makar bomb that was dropped the week before. They discuss reasons why Makar would be coming out at this point and speculate on this lawsuit that he made mention to throughout the interview. Take a listen to the show on either the Cardrunners site or download it directly from iTunes to listen to this interview.

DonkDown Radio:

I usually do not repeat shows in back to back weeks, but these guys are at the center of the poker podcast world this week and have came back from last weeks bombshell of a show with a followup show that has a run time of over four hours. Do not be worried though, we will tell you where to skip ahead to so that you can save some time.

22:30 – Bryan Micon starts to discuss his meeting with Travis Makar, where he discusses some of the documents that he saw during the meeting.

45:10 – Brad Booth joins the show to discuss being cheated by the super-user accounts.

Yesterday we brought you the transcripts of the Travis Makar transcripts thanks to the guys over at DonkDown. In the short synopsis that we gave you we made mention that Bryan Micon had planned on meeting up with Makar to take a look at some of the documents he supposedly was in possession of.

Well that meeting happened yesterday and Micon was able to walk away with more than just some mental pictures of the documents. He actually got Makar to let him leave with one of the many emails that he made mention of during the interview. You can view that email and Micon’s thoughts of the meet-up over on the DonkDown Forums.

If you are still wanting some more information on the meeting then be sure to check out the DonkDown Radio show tonight at 10:30 PM ET where Micon will be giving more details and be answering questions throughout the show.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, UB COO Paul Leggett has posted his own response to the original Travis Makar interview here.